This invention relates to enhancement of the security of network transactions.
Electronic commerce over the public Internet has enjoyed significant growth. However, there are concerns over the security of transactional information sent over the public Internet. One approach to address these concerns has been the advent of so-called “secure sites” (which are usually identified by the high level address of “https”, where the concluding “s” stands for “secure”). These sites encrypt communications to achieve security over the public Internet. While secure sites do provide a significant measure of security, encrypted data packets sent to and from these sites may be intercepted leading to the possibility that they may be decrypted by sophisticated hackers.
Thus, there remains a need for an approach to electronic commerce which better ensures the security of such commerce.
In some instances, a prospective consumer of electronic data may wish to remain anonymous. An anonymous transaction, by its nature, provides transaction security. Thus, there is also a need for an approach to electronic commerce which provides anonymity.